A West Side career criminal whom witnesses and prosecutors had identified as a “sergeant” or veteran in the Mexican Mafia prison gang was found not guilty of murder Thursday in the brutal August 2016 stabbing of a neighborhood friend and drug dealer.

Ignacio “Nacho” Jimenez, 53, shook the hand of his attorney and smiled when Visiting Judge Dick Alcala read the verdict, which the jury of 10 women and two men reached after about 90 minutes of deliberation.

“I never say that, ‘I saw it coming,’” defense attorney Robert Maurer said. “What this tells me is that jurors actually pay attention and they care about the oath they take. … This was all about lazy police work and the credibility of an unreliable criminal witness.”

The state’s primary witness, James Chapa, 38, had told jurors he was a former Mexican Mafia member who was given immunity for his role in the murder by the Bexar County district attorney’s office. He testified that he, Jimenez and a third man helped stab Roland Pantoja 18 times with a foot-long knife around midnight Aug. 29, 2016.

In handcuffs and jail attire, Chapa said the killing was in retaliation for Pantoja’s running Jimenez down with his pickup the previous June, leaving him with a fractured hip, collapsed lung and other injuries. Pantoja, under assault, said it was an accident as he begged for his life, Chapa testified.

Pantoja was pistol-whipped and stabbed repeatedly by co-defendant David Ortiz before Ortiz handed the knife to Jimenez and told Pantoja, ‘It’s up to Nacho if you live or die,’” Chapa testified. Then, Chapa said, Jimenez stabbed Pantoja deeply in the chest twice, and told the dying man he was “sorry, too.”

Ortiz will be tried on a murder charge this fall.

In their closing remarks to jurors, prosecutors said the killing was done for no other reason than revenge and retaliation and told them they didn’t have to like Chapa in order to believe his story.

“Let’s talk about witness credibility,” prosecutor Tom Nesbitt said. “When James Chapa was handed that big ream of paper (on the witness stand), that was the transcript of his interview with the police, and the defense could only find two or three small things that had changed in his testimony. Ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of his statement never changed.”

Not so, countered Maurer, who accused Chapa, an admitted vehicle thief and methamphetamine dealer, of lying for the obvious reason of not wanting to do life in prison for murder.

“Who’s got a motive to lie?” Maurer asked the jury, which was escorted out by bailiffs after the verdict was announced and kept from speaking to reporters at the direction of Judge Alcala. Maurer also prevented his client from speaking to news media.

Jimenez, who family members said “would never be the same” after his injuries, walked out of the courtroom, surrounded by bailiffs, as one relative shouted to her uncle, “Love you, Tio!”